CRANDON — A violent sex offender whose proposed placement in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest raised the ire of neighboring property owners could now be headed for temporary placement in Door County.

Jeffrey LeVasseur, 51, designated in 2008 under state Chapter 980 to be a violent sex offender with a mental disorder and a predisposition to re-offend, appears to be headed temporarily to a duplex in Egg Harbor as a court battle continues over his proposed permanent residence in Forest County.

Vilas County Judge Neal Nielsen III, hearing LeVasseur's placement case on behalf of Forest County, on Friday approved moving LeVasseur into a duplex at 5073 Monument Point Road in Egg Harbor while the court and officials from the state Department of Health Services continue to seek a permanent home him in Forest County.

The approval is provisional pending formal objections from Egg Harbor, Door County and that county’s Department of Health and Human Services. They must submit objections within the next 60 days, or the placement goes into effect May 14, Nielsen ruled.

Door County District Attorney Colleen Nordin has already responded with an informal objection. She told the court she opposes the placement because LeVasseur, guilty of offenses in Forest County, should live there.

LeVasseur was accused of sexually molesting four children in Forest County ranging in age from 2 to 11 in the span of about three years in the early 1990s. He ultimately was convicted of two counts of first-degree sexual assault of children.

Home owners fight placement

Special prosecutor Kevin Greene, a Brown County assistant district attorney assigned to LeVasseur’s case, and the Department of Health Services originally approved a plan to place LeVasseur in a cabin in a remote section of the Forest County town of Blackwell.

He has been deemed eligible for supervised release, and the Blackwell cabin meets all the statutory requirements, Greene has argued.

But owners of cottages along the lake near that cabin have mounted objections, citing a nearby federally-operated beach and campgrounds that would put children in harm’s way. The area is far from law enforcement coverage, receives poor to no cell phone reception and is too remote for proper monitoring of a dangerous sex offender’s activities, those property owners said.

In addition, the placement would violate a covenant that protects area properties from commercial use, the property owners argue. The state proposed placing LeVasseur in the cabin recently purchased by GWB Ventures LLC, of Fond du Lac, which would then rent the cabin to the state.

That’s a clear violation of the covenant, members of the property owners association argue.

Nielsen has appeared unmoved by objections raised by the town, law enforcement and even the Department of Corrections over the placement. And he was no more receptive to the arguments of the property owners’ association.

But the group filed a lawsuit against GWB Ventures in February for defying the covenant, and the judge in that case issued an injunction against moving LeVasseur into the Blackwell home pending resolution of the lawsuit.

Since then, Greene and the Department of Health Services have been searching for housing that meets the conditions of LeVasseur's release.

A place in Portage County was under consideration but became unavailable before they could act, they told the court.

The Egg Harbor duplex and a home in the Jefferson County town of Oakland are now available, and the Jefferson County town has been designated as the backup if the Egg Harbor location is rejected. The Egg Harbor location is about 2.2 miles from a campgrounds, but that's well outside the 1,500-foot limit the statute imposes.

As a designated violent sex offender under Chapter 980, LeVasseur is a ward of the Department of Health Services, not of the Department of Corrections. That means he is regarded as a patient, not an inmate, and he can be held indefinitely in a treatment facility.

But the law also provides offenders with the annual right to argue that they are no longer dangerous and are eligible for supervised release. They need to show they’ve made significant progress in their treatment, that the progress can be sustained under supervised release and that it is “substantially probable” they won’t re-offend.

Nielsen found LeVasseur met the requirements for supervised release in September 2016. That means the DHS is under court order to release LeVasseur from the confines of Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, where he has been living, and place him somewhere that meets the strict guidelines provided in Chapter 980.